One of my favourite works of art is the ‘Wave of Kanagawa’ painting by the 19th century Ukiyo-e artist Katsushika Hokusai. (See this site for an image and analysis: [link] ).To me, the image of this particular woodblock painting - which depicts fishermen in tiny boats struggling with determination against an enormous wave - is a frightening, awe-inspiring and yet uplifting one. It represents triumph against adversity, and epitomizes the resilience and spirit the Japanese have shown against the fury of nature since time immemorial.

The above fractal, inspired by the famous Hokusai painting, has been a work-in-progress for a while. I had, in fact, forgotten about it, only to be perversely reminded of it by the sad events of the past four days or so. I hesitated to put this up, partly because I wasn't sure how such an image might be interpreted. It is, after all, a grim reminder of the sad events that have taken place recently. The ‘wave’ in this piece is a rather ugly one – it doesn’t have the ‘claws’ you see in beautiful wave of Hokusai’s painting, but it has ‘teeth’. There is no uplifting image of boats with fishermen keeping afloat to compensate for it, and had I wanted to duplicate something of that nature in the fractal it would have been beyond my abilities to do so. But there is a red sun rising in the horizon, and that red sun represents my hopes and prayers for Japan.

Awarded an IFDD for March 20, 2011 and a DD on June 18, 2012. Many thanks to ImagersFractalDDs and SuicideBySafetyPin for featuring this piece. Also thanks to everyone who favourited this piece, and for all the kind comments; I appreciate the support.